


A Strange Thing: My Conscience

by KissTheBoy7



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Enjolrangst, Fluff and Angst, Love/Hate, M/M, and E is not fond of this feel, in which R idolizes E
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-10
Updated: 2013-03-10
Packaged: 2017-12-04 20:09:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/714582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KissTheBoy7/pseuds/KissTheBoy7
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is very little that can make Enjolras nervous. Almost every single one of them is Grantaire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Strange Thing: My Conscience

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ryssabeth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryssabeth/gifts).



> Erm, random drabbly things for Ryssa's birthday. Pretty belated. But... *awkward* Enjoy this and the Brick quote above that I just thought was really great when I was skimming through and it seemed pretty applicable to this.

There is very little that can make Enjolras nervous. Almost every single one of them is Grantaire.

It's infuriating to no end, but perhaps that's why he's drawn to him. With every wristband he adds to his wrist, every cause he takes part in, every petition he signs, every march he's participated in, he's been fueled by nothing but raw emotion. When he was younger this often meant detention and stern talking-tos, and those few weeks that none of his friends but Combeferre are ever allowed to know about when the school psychologist had demanded his mother cart him to anger management classes in the twelfth grade. Now that he's independent he has a way to channel all of that fury, all of his excess energy. If something bothers him, he throws himself and everyone who will follow his bellowing voice into rallies and protests and marches that would give his mother a heart attack if he ever bothered to write her back anymore. Grantaire, however, is a person and not just an outlet and that makes everything more complicated than it has any right to be.

He scares him. More than he's ever likely to admit, and that's another problem entirely, but he won't get into that here.

Grantaire bothers him perhaps more than any other person in the world ever will. He's sarcastic and perfectly capable of holding an intelligent conversation, but the flask comes out and Enjolras' initial fondness for him evaporates into thin air. It's hard to love someone who is perpetually drunk and stumbling into bed at three a.m. smelling like he's swallowed the entire bar with the people still in it. It's hard to comprehend that he  _loves_ someone at all, and sometimes he wonders if he does.

Again, though, he won't be telling Grantaire that.

That's the thing about Grantaire, though. He's fragile. Delicate. So easily broken, especially by Enjolras, whom he still worships like some sort of god. (in and out of bed) And Enjolras is so very aware of the power he has over the other man, every moment of the day, feeling the pressure bear down like nothing else in the world has ever managed to do. It's like he knows, he  _knows_ , he knows everything, knows how to get under his skin and wriggle his way into his heart and make him self-conscious, like that's even a fucking thing for him. He's never  _been_ self-conscious before and he hates this particular emotion that R always manages to elicit with the slightest look, a text message, a Post-It note sloppily scrawled upon on the fridge.

He could fuck it all up with just the wrong word. Some days he thinks that he has - was too sharp in his reprimands, too cold, and Grantaire gets that look on his face and his heart nearly stops. Maybe he would only leave, and never come back - or maybe Enjolras would come home one day and find him dead on the bathroom floor in a puddle of blood or vomit or whatever way he'd chosen out because his precious Apollo didn't know how to handle an adult relationship.

The problem is that there's no real way to escape this persistent anxiety. He can't start a petition; he can't march on Washington to make Grantaire stop drinking, stop loving him  _quite_ so much or at all because there are times when Enjolras thinks that even that is too much for him to cope with. There is no outlet for this and he has to live with it, because he loves him, because as  _infuriating_ as he is, R has become his favorite letter of the alphabet and there is no cause more worthy than him.

So he stays. But it can't be said that he does  _nothing._

He can't do it all the time. He's sure that would drive him mad before anything else did, being so sickeningly sweet, like Jehan is without even trying. He lacks tact, or so he's been told, so it's hard to reign in his razor-tongue and smile a little more even when he doesn't have a clear cut reason to, and when he wants to throttle him he somehow manages only a tight-lipped expression and a nod as he helps him to the toilet before he throws up on the sheets.

There is no way for him to live up to the vision Grantaire has made him out to be. He's not quite sure he wants to. Perfection is not attainable, and he's not Apollo - which he frequently and futilely reminds him - and trying to be would be the death of him. He's no god, but to Grantaire, he is everything.

_Infuriating. Exasperating. Tear-your-hair-out, scream-into-a-pillow, punch-a-hole-in-the-wall goddamn motherfucking Grantaire._

Yet here he is, still, and now he's learned to fill Grantaire's flask with water while he's asleep and to comb his fingers through his hair while he sleeps to get the knots out, and while they lie together, breathing heavily in the dark, he presses a hand over his heart to reassure himself that it's still beating. It is. He hasn't lost him yet.

He will try, but not too hard. He is a cause but not a Cause, and Enjolras doesn't dare to scare him away with the whole of his passion at once, even if anything less is apt to make him anxious. It's a lesson in moderation.

That's something they both need.


End file.
